Strategy

The division of Drug Discovery and Safety combines the former divisions Toxicology and Medicinal Chemistry.

The research area of this division is focused on the development of novel therapeutic modalities and novel concepts in early drug discovery, in order to better predict ligand-target interactions.

For this, we use advanced imaging-based phenotypic screening. We complement this approach with the cheminformatics-based identification of novel chemical structures with optimal target affinity and specificity.

This is vital to the understanding of pharmacological modulation of drug targets at the molecular level. Especially at the level of the interaction-kinetics of the drug and the target. Special bio-informatics approaches are deployed to allow us to take into account the population variation at the protein level.

In addition, we aim to design cutting-edge formulations and administration strategies, in order to specifically target the site of disease, maximise the desired therapeutic effect and minimize adverse reactions to the drug.